


slow down (i just wanna get to know you)

by tagteamme



Series: tagteamme's niche sports AUs [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Sports, Enemies in the public eye friends in private, Friends With Benefits, Humor, I HAVENT SUNK THAT LOW, M/M, Mentions of Other Voltron Paladins, Misunderstandings, Pining, Romance, THEY ARE THE ONES RACING SNAILS, They're human, competitive snail racing, edit: KEITH AND SHIRO ARE NOT THE SNAILS LMAO, i feel like i'm forgetting a tag, its ok, please don't take this fic too seriously, right - Freeform, so much pining, the greatness of this sport is deeply exagerrated, to be specific, yet - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-12 16:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15343971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tagteamme/pseuds/tagteamme
Summary: There's no one else as mean as Takashi Shirogane on the competitive circuit.There's also no one else as hot as Takashi Shirogane on the competitive circuit.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title from bobby valentino's "slow down". i joked about this AU a while back and here we are. here we are.

There are a few hard facts about Takashi Shirogane that the public knows.

First, he’s mean as hell. He taunts his competition and trash talks like no other. Anyone who faces him has to avoid any interview he does pre-race, lest they hear his latest sharp jab and insult. It’s a sharp turn from the sweet and funny man who had emerged on the scene a year and a half ago.

Second, he’s also popular as hell. He’s the reason that the sport is has traction to begin with— his social media following is sizeable and he’s the reason state competitions can afford to advertise on billboards. There are talks that he’s even landed a modelling campaign with a big brand, but that’s yet to be revealed.

Third, his main competition and the purported bane of his existence is one lanky college student who just goes by Keith. He hasn’t registered his last name in his competition, neither has his roommate turned over-enthusiastic coach Lance. Both of them barely have a social media presence. Keith has an instagram account, but all it contains is a vignetted image of a leaf with no caption.

Keith’s been a rising star in the racing circles; people have started comparing him to Shiro, have started to say that maybe he’s even better than Shiro. Shiro has been publicly vocal about how _no one_ can come even close to touching his legacy, and he’s repeatedly stated that he can’t wait for the day that they get to face each other on the track.

That’s what the public knows. That’s what the public thinks they know.

This is what Keith knows:

Takashi Shirogane is going back to university in the fall for a degree in mechanical engineering. He sees it as a fresh start because he’s been trying to figure out his life since he returned from service, and he’s coincidentally chosen the same school Keith’s going to. It’s what he used as an opener when he first bumped into Keith in the lobby of the bed and breakfast which had been housing a junior and a senior competition. The competitions aren’t divided by age but by experience; Keith’s won a lot, but he’s also lost some, mostly around the time he’s had finals to study for and couldn’t be bothered. On that day, he had just won his division, meaning the next two tournaments he competed in would be his qualifiers to get into the senior division. He had been walking down a hall with half a croissant in his mouth while he tried to talk Lance out of buying test answers over the phone when he ran into a solid wall of man.

Keith blinked, and felt some sort of trepidation when he saw who it was. He had straightened his back and tried to look as serious as he could while subtly trying to brush off the flakes around the corner of his mouth. But what had happened next had surprised him; the other man had smiled, apologized, and had said, “You’re Keith, right?” in a voice that was both pleasant and luxurious.

That leads to the second thing that Keith knows. Takashi “Call me Shiro” Shirogane is the kindest, most polite man he’s ever met. His abrasive personality is purely for show; his coach is always looking for ways to draw in more viewers, because more viewers means more sponsorships and more sponsorships means more money. Since Shiro turned dark side, the amount of money people have poured into watching the sport has increased by a mind boggling percentage.He doesn’t like being mean, but it pays the bills, and it’s going to pay for rent in the small apartment he’s moving into that’ll be ten minutes away from Keith’s place.

Shiro had and he still has a lot of questions about the university, and he has told Keith that he should consider making up a persona as well. It’ll ease his student debt by a lot, especially since he’s an up and coming star with a lot of potential. Shiro also apologized approximately thirty times within the span of that first conversation for having a mean personality, and tells Keith that it’s really cool that he’s able to balance hopping across a dozen states and being a full-time student. He had asked if there was any way he could make it up to Keith, and Keith had just shrugged and told him the whole press thing didn’t really bother him to begin with.

It eased the blow significantly later that day, when Keith watched an interviewer ask Shiro what he makes of the fact that the one person who’s been constantly called a younger, better version of him, is so close to advancing into his division. The way Shiro lobbed insult after joke after insult towards Keith’s way was almost artistic; Lance yelled at the television repeatedly while Keith reconciled this man with the same one who suggested they go to an Italian seafood restaurant for lunch and then footed the entire bill as part of his apology.

The third thing Keith knows is that the company who’s going to do a big reveal of having Shiro head a campaign is a big underwear company. Shiro’s already shot the spread and it’s going to be launched as a surprise in two weeks. Keith can tell why they chose Shiro. Shiro’s got a face carved by some form of higher power, a smile that’s almost blinding, and a body that’s way more built than anyone who competes in the sport professionally has any business being. Shiro says he has to work out so that his body can comfortably hold up his prosthetic, and Keith’s got no complaints. Keith’s pretty sure Shiro’s abs ripple, and if he ever lands up in a situation where he has to choose how to die, he’s going to politely request that Shiro chokes him out with his big, muscular arms.

The last thing Keith knows, the thing that’s a little more private than the others, is how strong said muscular arms are. Keith may be a little shorter than most, but he’s not lanky like all the news junkets claim he is. He’s got a good amount of muscle on his wiry frame from years of doing three different martial arts; it’s just hidden beneath the flannel and the faded university shirts. At the end of the day, he’s a lot heavier than he looks.

But Shiro’s currently holding him up against the wall of Keith’s room like he weighs nothing. Keith’s got his legs wrapped around a slim waist, arms slung around broad shoulders, and is trying not to make too much noise as they kiss in the dark of the room. It’s a lot harder than it seems, because Shiro kisses like a dream come true, and in about thirty seconds, he’s going to turn on his heel and throw Keith onto the bed, showing him how he can move like one too. Against his better judgement, Keith lets out a small groan in between the kisses, and Shiro bites Keith’s lip to hush him.

“They’ll hear us down the hall,” He says quietly, and Keith nods. “We need to try our best not to wake them up.”

“They” being their equally hot-headed coaches, who have taken the smaller  two bedrooms on the other side of the house the four of them had been forced to rent last minute. The inn where the state competition is currently being held had accidentally double-booked them with a corporate event which unfortunately was significantly more important and had paid their deposit a month before the competitive board had. The competitors had been left scrambling to find their own accommodations, and Keith had been in the middle of asking Lance to outline, with citations, why exactly sleeping in a car was not a good option when Shiro had come up to him and asked him if they wanted to split the cost of a spacious mobile home he had found on a short term rental site.

Lance had muttered something about fraternizing with an unforgivable enemy, but Keith had shrugged and agreed. Lance had been even more chagrined when later on, Shiro told one of the journalists taking quotes before one of the events that Keith’s ugly haircut was perfect to mop the floor with, but Keith had brushed it off. It’s partly because the insult is weak, and partly because Keith knows how much Shiro actually likes his hair, likes carding his fingers through it and pulling on it when things get really heated. He also tells the press that it’s fighting words from someone who specifically styles his hair to draw attention away from the fact that his head is kind of flat.

Shiro had asked if all four of them wanted to go out to dinner, but Lance turned him down hard before Keith could say okay.  It didn’t bug him much though and it came as no surprise when later that night when everyone had tucked in, the coaches taking the smaller rooms so that the talent could rest better, Shiro had showed up at the door of Keith’s room with a soft knock.

“Stop thinking so much,” Shiro says against his mouth, and Keith blinks back to the moment. He feels a slick tongue slide in, heavy and familiar, and he accepts it enthusiastically. Shiro presses in closer and Keith squeezes his thighs as he lets himself get lost in the kiss.

This is the fourth time they’ve done this, and Keith doesn’t know if this fully qualifies as sleeping with the enemy. In the public eye, they’ve got a fierce rivalry being closely followed by their fans that they do their best to stoke. It’s vicious and ugly and makes for spectacular entertainment. In private, Keith’s mouth goes dry every time he sees the low cut of Shiro’s sweatpants and Shiro’s hands can barely seem to resist the draw of sliding up Keith’s shirt.

Their coaches don’t know either. No one really does, except for Keith and Shiro, and Keith doesn’t know if it’s something that they want to keep that way. He’s actually not quite sure what this is, not quite sure what it means when you exchange cruel jabs with someone on television but kind words and body heat between the sheets.

“We gotta go on the floor,” Shiro murmurs against his neck. “Or stay like this, but the bed’s gonna be too loud. What do you want, babe?”

“Anything,” Keith half chokes out the word as Shiro lays a trail of wet kisses across the line of his throat. “Anything you want to give me.”

Keith tries not to think about it, tries to just enjoy the moment as it comes. It’s all for the better because he knows that otherwise, he’s going to have to come to terms with the fact that the man he has an undefined thing with, the man who draws him in and touches him like no other, is a man he met at a competitive snail racing competition.

 

* * *

 

“You look especially ugly this morning,” Lance comments as Keith treads into the kitchen. Keith yawns and scratches the bridge of his nose with his middle finger, and Lance returns the gesture with equal laziness.

“Where are the others?” Keith asks, trying to rub away some of the sleep from his eyes as he pulls up a chair at the tiny dining table.

“The gym,” Lance says with a small amount of disdain. Of course, Keith already knows this, because Shiro had woken him up quietly to give him a small kiss and a good luck before he snuck back to his own room, but he figures it’s best to pretend as much as he can.

“Interesting,” Keith replies, coughing a little as he reaches for the cornflakes. Despite no prompt, Lance keeps talking.

“You should consider going to the gym too,” Lance says, jabbing a spoon towards Keith. A fleck of milk lands on Keith’s cheek, and he ignores it for the sake of his own sanity. “Apparently we’re getting a tuition hike next year. You need to get hot so that we can bring in some sponsorship money.”

“We do have sponsorship money,” Keith points out through his mouthful of cereal. It’s not a lie— their university gives them a hundred dollars every time they travel out of state for a competition. Lance’s uncle’s print shop sponsors them as well, and so does one of the local vet offices.

“We need big sponsorship money,” Lance insists. “Like how Shiro gets. I think he earns more than people do in their real jobs.”

“I don’t think I could get hot enough for underwear modelling,” Keith says thoughtfully, before spooning in some more cornflakes into his mouth. The sugar is less, and it’s a little on the blander side, but Keith’s hungry enough for it to taste passable enough. It takes half the bowl before he realizes that Lance has been staring at him in silence. He grunts in question, and Lance finally speaks.

“How do you know it’s underwear modelling?” Lance asks, and Keith gives him a bemused look. “He said last night that it’s under an NDA, and he can’t tell anybody. Just him and his coach.”

“Well,” Keith starts, but cannot continue. Lance continues to stare at him, and Keith shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He can feel soft bruising against the back of his thighs as he moves, and Keith attempts to keep as straight a face as possible. “He let it slip last night.”

Lance raises an eyebrow, so Keith continues.

“I woke up to get water,” Keith explains, and Lance narrows his eyes. “I ran into him, and he was on the phone with someone. He hung up, but I heard some.”

It’s an absolutely shitty lie, and Keith’s pretty sure that Lance is about to catch onto it. Lance would like to think that he catches Keith’s lies because he’s intelligent, but the truth is that Keith’s never actually genuinely cared enough to put in effort.

“And he didn’t chew you out?” Lance asks, and Keith has swallow his next spoonful of cereal hard so that he doesn’t go pink. “I feel like that’s something he’d bring down the house for.”

It’s absolutely not. Shiro’s too genuinely sweet and kind and ineffable to ever do something like that. But almost no one else who knows Shiro through his tenure as a competitive snail racer knows this.

“Swore me to secrecy,” Keith raises his eyebrows. “If you let it slip, I’m gonna say you were eavesdropping.”

“Ugly,” Lance says, his go-to word for whenever he wants to bait Keith but can’t think of anything. “I’m gonna go check on your kids.”

“They’re fine,” Keith replies, because he had seen Shiro drop two leaves into their aquarium before he left, but Lance gives him a look anyways as he pushes away from the table and gets up.

 

* * *

 

This tournament is his last one in the junior decision. His next one’s his first official debut in the senior division, and Keith’s still grappling with the fact that competitive snail racing is big enough that it has divisions. This tournament’s had a sizeable turnout, and it’s set up like a fairground on the soccer fields of a local highschool.

It had started as a joke at the beginning of the last semester. Their dorm hadn’t allowed pets, Lance had been extremely annoying, someone accidentally blew up a microwave, and those three events somehow led to Keith keeping two snails as pets on his desk in his dorm. He hadn’t told Lance that he had gotten them, so when Lance came home after taking an extended weekend to visit his family, Keith had been expecting him to blow up at Keith.

However, Lance had pressed his face against the glass of the terrarium, made a noise of interest, and told Keith one of his cousins had shown him a really interesting Instagram page. It had been the page of one Takashi Shirogane, snail lover and racer extraordinaire, and Keith had spent a good five minutes scrolling through shirtless gym selfies before Lance snatched his phone back and forcefully pointed out what he _actually_ wanted Keith to see— a video of Shiro standing at a miniature race track, encouraging an excruciatingly slow snail to slug across the black surface and beat the other snail on the track.

It had been maybe the most boring video Keith had seen in his life, minus the fact that Shiro looked like he had walked right out of a commercial, but his interest perked up when the judge at the end of the video announced that Shiro had won a grand total of _two thousand dollars_. Keith had looked at the paused video of Shiro taking the giant cardboard cheque, looked at Lance, and then looked at his terrarium, and that had been that.

They had entered in a local tournament, won the hell out of it because their only other competitor had caught the flu and had been a no-show, and it had only gone up from there. Keith’s not made a career out of it, but he has made enough money that he can buy a handle of vodka without crying and the bill for his student loan feels fractionally less crushing.

And all because of Shiro, who is currently sitting at a bench under a gazebo with a short and timid looking reporter, absolutely roasting the living daylights out of Keith. It stands in contrast to the man who had been praising Keith in low murmurs the night before, and the difference is so stark that Keith can’t help but laugh.

Keith’s been a hot topic for reporters to talk to Shiro about, and every interview Keith does has the journalist asking at least five different questions about Shiro. It all revolves around the tournament coming up next month, where the two will finally go toe to toe. Keith’s tried to go the insult route in his interviews, but he’s categorically bad at making fun of people in a way that sticks. The only good thing he’s managed to say is that the only thing slower than Shiro’s snails is his own geriatric body, which was received well by everyone despite the fact that Shiro’s only a few years older and also looks like he was carved out of marble by an old god.

His phone pings, and it’s Lance, telling him they have ten minutes to pull on their uniforms before Keith’s next round starts. Their uniforms are an black visor and matching beige polos, and has an ugly drawing of Keith’s face stenciled onto it in black. It’s perhaps the worst thing Keith’s had to wear in his life, and was also the first article of clothing Shiro had ever taken off of him when they first hooked up.

He gives a short wave to Shiro, and Shiro winks back at him over the reporter’s shoulder. Before they can turn around and see who Shiro’s attention has diverted to, Keith’s already disappeared.

 

* * *

 

“Do you ever thinks he gets tired of if?” Lance asks in all seriousness, and Keith hums as he idly traces the rim of the whiskey glass.

He won his race and a cool check for a thousand dollars. A good amount will go to gas and food, but he's gonna save fifteen dollars for the library fine he owes his school library, and the rest is going to assist him and Lance in getting as tanked as possible. His snails are tucked in bed in his room, resting with a juicy treat for a job well done. If anyone had told Keith that he'd be a snail dad a year ago, and that Lance would be the snail uncle to his snails, he probably would have walked into a wall to check if he was dreaming

“Who gets tired of what?” Keith asks finally, after Lance continues to bore a hole into the side of his head.

“Shiro, dumbass,” Lance says, and Keith turns to give him a flat look. “Do you ever thinks he gets tired of being a giant jerk?”

The answer is a resounding yes, and that Shiro’s already looking into how he can gradually change his persona back into something nicer, now that he has a couple of sweet endorsements.

“Do I care?” he asks evenly, and Lance rolls his eyes. “Why are we even talking about him?”

“Because he just walked through the door,” Lance says, tipping his head. Keith follows the line of vision till it reaches a sizeable group of people bustling through the pub doors.

They’re whooping and cheering and thumping Shiro on the back for another hard-won tournament. It’s with the same amount of enthusiasm one would celebrate a legitimate sport, and Shiro’s motley group makes a beeline for the counter where Keith and Lance are sitting.

“We need to start bringing more of our friends to these things,” Keith mutters, and Lance scoffs.

“With what money?” He points out, and Keith shrugs. “I’m telling you, if you become mean or hot, or mean _and_ hot, we’re going to make so much more bread. It could be as easy as you changing your wardrobe to something less monochromatic and faded.”

Lance says the last part with a grand wave over Keith’s being. Keith knows that a baggy Billabong shirt and khaki shorts is not the most attractive outfit, but he likes dressing ugly to specifically piss off his friends.

“I have exams to study for,” Keith informs Lance, and Lance scoffs. He looks down at his phone, and Keith takes the opportunity to sneak a look down the counter to where Shiro and his friends have landed.

There’s a guy around their age with his arm slung around Shiro, enthusiastically yelling at the bar tender for a round of beers. He looks somewhat familiar, but Keith can’t quite place where he’s seen that shaggy brown hair before. Shiro says something to the guy, and is about to turn to look at someone else when he catches Keith’s eye.

For a moment, the noise in the bar reduces to a low din. Lance starts saying something, eyes still glued to his phone, but Keith doesn’t register it because Shiro tilts the corner of his mouth up in a small smile. It’s private and it’s beautiful in the low golden light of the bar, and Keith thinks his heart stops.

And then Lance shoves his shoulder, and Keith’s snapped back to reality.

“What?” He grumbles, and Lance rolls his eyes. He starts talking, but it’s something lame about social media, so Keith tunes him out. He thinks instead of how it’d be like if he and Shiro could hang out in public.

Or, if Keith really wants to live in his imagination, how it’d be like if they went on a date instead of hooked up in private without telling anyone. Shiro’s never brought it up though, and he’s the one with a public image to maintain, so Keith drops it. At any rate, tonight’s their last night at their shared house before they part ways for a month, and Keith’s hoping he can get Shiro to leave him something to remember by him by.

“I’m going to the washroom,” He informs Lance, cutting him off in the middle of a sentence. Lance doesn’t bother protesting, just gives Keith the finger and returns to his phone. Keith slides off the barstool and makes his way through the crowd, trying to bump across as little tables as possible.

Shiro intercepts him on the way back out, when Keith’s still on the other side of the bar. When Keith leaves the washroom, there’s a jukebox that catches his eye because it’s got a small figurine in it that looks a lot like Hunk. He takes out his phone to take a picture, and feels two large and familiar hands slide over his hips. He looks down and sees the familiar silver of Shiro’s prosthetic and when he turns around, Shiro meets him with a kiss. Keith is more than happy to go along, sliding his arms around Shiro’s waist. Shiro tastes like chocolate and vodka, and Keith can feel the sticky sweet remnants of his drink on his lips.

“I believe congratulations are in order,” Shiro says lowly when they break apart, leaning his forehead against Keith's. “Good job on the race.”

“Stop saying it like that,” Keith grumbles, stepping to the side and guiding them away from the juke box. There’s a tall pillar that juts out beside the box and creates a small nook with the wall. Shiro follows, pressing him completely into the corner and covering his body enough so that no one who spares a passing glance can see who Shiro has pinned. Not that there’s a lot of people in this podunk bar that are heavily invested in the good sport of snail racing, but Shiro’s draw lies more in his looks than the snail he affectionately coos to during the pre-race.

”Like what?” Shiro says with the same smile he had given Keith earlier.

“Like it's something cool,” Keith says and Shiro laughs, pressing a wet kiss to Keith’s cheek.

“It's very cool,” Shiro replies in a serious tone. “I heard it gets you all the ladies.”

“I sure hope so,” Keith deadpans. “Otherwise we’re gonna be stuck with each other.”

Shiro grins hefore he leans in to swoop Keith up into another kiss. His hands slide down and Keith feels his large hands squeeze over the rear of his jeans before Shiro hooks a thumb into the waistband.

“Easy there big guy,” Keith says, his hands drifting down Shiro’s back so that he can get a handful as well. Shiro pecks him once on the lips before kissing a soft trail across Keith’s jaw. Keith tries to scan the room over Shiro’s shoulder, but can’t see any of their respective friends looking for them. He’s not sure he’d care if they were, though.

“I'm not gonna be seeing you for at least a month,” Shiro says. “I wanna get my fill.”

“Yeah?” Keith’s the one to lean up and press their lips together this time, and he drinks in how measured and languid Shiro’s mouth feels against his. It tastes good, and Keith knows he’s going to miss this something fierce.

“Hey,” Shiro says when they break apart. “Wanna come hang out with my friends? I’ll buy you a drink.”

“How much did you win today?” Keith gently teases. “And you’re only going to buy me one drink?”

Shiro rolls his eyes but the smile doesn’t leave his face.

“I’ll buy you as many as you want,” He says, but Keith shakes his head.

“Don’t worry about it,” Keith brushes off some invisible dust from Shiro’s shoulder. “I don’t want you to have to explain why you’re fraternizing with your enemy. You should enjoy your night.”

Shiro looks disappointed for a fleeting moment, but then shrugs nonchalantly.

“Sure,” He says. “Speaking of though, they’re probably looking for me right now.”

“Probably,” Keith replies, and he feels Shiro’s hands start to slip off of them. The monkey part of his brain wants them back on him, but the human part of his brain observes Shiro’s friend from before standing up on a bar stool to scan the room.

“Go,” Keith pushes Shiro away gently.

“Text me when you leave,” Shiro says as he starts to step back, and Keith nods.

“I’ll leave the door open,” Keith says. There’s a part of Keith that really wants to just say fuck it, ask Shiro what they are, and then stride over to their friends and collectively announce that he and Shiro have gotten it on.

But Keith has some self control, knows there’s two people in this and that he can’t just jump down Shiro’s throat with a question like that the night before they part for a month, so he leaves it for now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm determined to finish this before s7 HAHA.

It’s been a week, and Keith doesn’t know if he’s allowed to miss Shiro. They had ended their last night together with Shiro giving Keith a wet kiss on the cheek and telling him to keep in touch, now that he has Shiro’s number. Shiro had snuck out of Keith’s room before everyone else had woken up for the morning, but Keith had had the clawing urge to tug him back into bed and let their friends finds them.

Shiro’s texted him a couple of times since they’ve last seen each other, and Keith replies when he’s not drowning in schoolwork. They have a tournament coming up in a few weeks where they’ll finally face off against each other on the hot, widely covered racetracks of professional snail racing, and Keith thinks that he needs to figure out what he’s feeling for Shiro. He’s ninety percent sure that it’s a crush, but there’s a ten percent chance that Keith’s just attached because he’s hot. Either ways, Keith wants to find some clarity before he runs into Shiro next and potentially embarasses himself on a public stage.

He gains a minor amount of clarity when on a dull Thursday morning, Lance drops down onto the seat next to Keith’s in the cafeteria, brandishing a thick Men’s Lifestyle magazine.

“Have you seen this?” Lance half exclaims, half demands, and Keith squints his eyes and swallows his lasagna. On the cover is an incredibly buff man with a scar over his eye, that looks like Wolverine with a braid. He’s well oiled and flexing with the world’s most serious expression, and Keith’s not sure why this would be of any importance to him.

“Who is that?” Keith asks, and Lance makes a noise as if Keith’s the one being vague and unintelligible. He nearly rips the magazine in half when he throws it open and tosses it onto the table beside Keith’s tray.

“Look,” Lance jabs a finger, and Keith follows it till he looks at what has got Lance all tied up.

Keith stares at the glossy paper. Sure enough, there’s an awfully familiar set of abs sprawled across a chaise lounge, in nothing but a pair of grey sweatpants and the black and white Calvin Klein band peeking through. It’s shot in sharp greyscale, and Keith hates the pavlovian response his mouth has every time he sees Shiro without clothes. 

“This is where you say it’s ugly,” Lance says helpfully, and Keith’s nowhere approaching the amount of skill it takes in lying and saying that Shiro looks ugly in this. That Shiro will ever look ugly in anything.

“They kept the snails,” Keith mumbles, mostly to himself. There are three snails, each sitting on a defined ab.They’ve left a small glistening trail behind them, one that Keith thinks has been photoshopped to look just that much slicker. Objectively, this should be disgusting. Even though Shiro is mid laugh, clearly indicating this shoot is not that serious, it should be disgusting. Subjectively, Keith goes a little cross-eyed.

“Hey,” Lance snaps his fingers in front of Keith’s face. “This is the enemy here. Stop drooling.”

“I can appreciate a good body,” Keith mutters under his breath and Lance squawks. 

“A good- he's referred to you multiple times as a person second and a mullet first!” Lance says indignantly and Keith makes an involuntary noise when Lance grabs the magazine and rolls it up. “Oh my god.”

“What?” Keith crosses his arms over his chest. “I just said he looks good.”

That earns him a thwack square in the centre of his forehead. Keith gives Lance a flat look, and Lance thwacks him again.

“Stop it,” Lance admonishes. “Stop being gross.”

“What was your purpose in showing me this then?!” Keith throws up his forearm to block Lance, and sees Lance’s grip slip. Immediately, he catches the magazine so that he can slap Lance across the face with it. “Yeah, not so fun right?”

“You’re the fucking worst,” Lance tries to get the magazine back, but Keith turns and pointedly shoves it into the backpack sitting at his feet. “Hey, that cost me five bucks.”

“You were ripped off,” Keith informs him, and Lance pinches his face at him before rolling his eyes and turning away. “Why are you showing me this anyways?”

“Hunk saw it actually,” Lance says. “I thought I’d get it so that it’d inspire you to get us better sponsorships.”

“I don’t look like this,” Keith gestures in the general vicinity of the his backpack, but Lance interrupts him before he can continue.

“It’s personality too,” He says, and Keith shrugs. “Hey, it’s a valid source of money. We could finally stop sharing rooms when we travel.”

That, Keith has to admit, does sound rather appealing. But there’s no way he can really measure up to Shiro, who’s pretty much cornered the market on attractive people who also like to race gastropods. Lance had once tried to dress him up to look like a James Dean-esque bad boy but that had involved making Keith wear his old motorcycle jacket over his already atrocious racing uniform. 

Keith’s pretty sure that his grave was made the day they decided that beige was a passable choice for a team colour. Lance refuses to hear it when Keith indicates as much. 

“We can do this,” He says. “The future you will thank me, believe me.”

Keith doubts Lance is going to land anything more than another local shop sending them a free gift-card in exchange for ironing their logo onto their team shirts. But he knows nothing he’ll say will make Lance believe otherwise, so he gives a noncommittal shrug and goes back to his food.

When Lance leaves, Keith digs the magazine out and opens it back to Shiro’s ad. He stares at it for a good minute before he decides that yeah. He’s allowed to miss Shiro. Shiro looks like he has been handcarved by God’s chosen angel, and had also sent Keith a picture of a cat in high heels the day before. Keith’s going to let himself have this— just a little bit though.

Just a little bit.

  
  


* * *

  
  
Keith’s memories get a little fuzzy when it comes to remembering why exactly he and Shiro hooked up in the first place. The actual act is seared into his brain, is the reason they came back for a repeat performance, and is something Keith doesn’t think he’ll ever forget. 

The first time they hooked up was the second time they had met. Shiro had been a guest at one of Keith’s races, showing up to draw publicity to the event. He did his regular snappy spiel on camera, and Keith had watched some of it in the locker room in the high school adjacent to the field. His snails had been sitting happily in their terrarium, munching on small pieces of kiwi while Keith watched Shiro’s interview on his phone, Shiro called Keith nothing but a low level hobbyist who stumbled his way into a competitive league. It was highly ludicrous and the last time he had run into Shiro, Shiro had lamented that the especially poor remarks were constructed by his coach, an over-enthusiastic uncle of a friend that gave a terrifying simpering look every time Shiro tried to say no. Somehow, knowing that made Keith laugh harder. He replayed the clip multiple times, wondering if Hunk would help him remix it into a song, and hadn’t notice Shiro walk into the locker room.

To Keith’s further amusement, Shiro had looked horrified that Keith had been watching the interview. He had felt bad, and had offered to get Keith food after the race as a way to apologize. Keith had shrugged it off, told Shiro that being a broke college student he understood and if someone told him he’d get good money insulting people, he’d take it up in a heartbeat so that he could get a suite instead of a shared room. He also told Shiro he’d think of something equally cutting to say, and had left it at that. Keith had won his race, everyone had cheered, and while he was retreating off of the small podium with his tiny on-the-go terrarium in his hands, Shiro had pulled him aside while no one was looking.

“Let me get you a drink at least,” He had said, and Keith had blinked because he never really had a man this obnoxiously attractive utter those words to him. “To make up for all the antagonizing I had to do.”

There was no way Keith would have said no to that, because this was the first race Lance hadn’t been able to make it to and especially because he had gone through all the trouble of getting a new fake ID that placed him as two years older and not twenty.

One thing led to another, and Keith went from sipping a beer while asking Shiro if he’s excited about going back to university, to getting surrounded by a heavily drunk and over enthusiastic bachelorette party, to doing body shots off Shiro while surrounded by clamouring girls, to climbing on top of Shiro and pressing him into the mattress in Shiro’s hotel room. It had been a really,  _ really _ good night to the point where Keith didn’t even feel hungover when he woke up.

The second time they hooked up followed shortly after. Shiro had made a teasing joke about not remembering much while they brushed their teeth, and in a show of seemingly seductive initiative Keith had thought had long died within him, he had herded Shiro out of the bathroom and back onto the bed. Keith had to split shortly after that because he had only half an hour to pack and hustle out to the coach bus stop and make the trek back to his town. 

It was only when he was safely secured in seat 22J that he had realized that he didn’t trade numbers with Shiro. Keith isn’t the most romantically inclined person, knows that it could really just be one night stand,  but he figured that Shiro was as hot as the pickings would get for Keith, and had mentally kicked himself for not at least trying.

It didn’t matter, because they saw each other a month later at another race. Shiro had been friendly enough to Keith once the cameras were turned away, and Keith thought that had been that. But it came his turn for an interview, and Keith ran off a list of insults about Shiro that he and Lance had spent three hours googling for the night before. It had been the meanest he had felt in a while, and he sought Shiro out after to apologize and ask how he managed to consistently do it even though his heart wasn’t in it. 

Shiro had actually laughed at the entire situation, told Keith he was doing to make a copy of the interview to listen to before bed every night, and then had enveloped Keith into a good natured hug. Keith had felt relieved for all of five minutes before he realized that they had been holding onto each other for said five minutes. He had drawn back, and knew the heat in his cheeks matched the faint pink dusting across Shiro’s face, and he had somehow found himself back in Shiro’s room. 

And still, Keith hadn’t gotten Shiro’s number until they had to share accommodations at the last tournament they were at together. That too had been out of convenience. Shiro’s texted him since then, and it’s mostly just poorly executed jokes about snails that make approximately no one but Shiro and Keith by proxy laugh. So Keith’s not quite sure what this makes them. He doesn’t know if he’s validated in pretending he lost the magazine with the Calvin Klein ad in it, only to hide it under his bed and away from Lance and Hunk’s grubby little paws.

He thinks maybe he should take more initiative, maybe text Shiro. Maybe even  _ call _ him. He’s not quite sure what he would say though, not quite sure what he wants out of it. So he leaves it for now, and thinks he’ll tackle whatever comes as it approaches.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Keith objectively does not like the library. It’s less because of the library itself and more because he seems to perennially come at a time where he ends up getting the shittiest table where he’s either seated with loud and annoying freshmen or at the table that seems to be stationed where the strongest waft of washroom air passes by. Right now, it’s the former. 

The only spare seat on the floor he needed is sadly amongst a group of freshmen and one incredibly pathetic junior that are arguing over…Keith’s not quite sure what they’re arguing over, but they’re all exclaiming in loud whispers and flailing even though he’s pretty sure they’re just agreeing with each other over and over again. His other option are the table directly in front of the washrooms or a seat at a table that smells heavily of old fish. Keith thinks he doesn’t hate himself quite that much today so he plugs in his headphones and hopes for the best.

He opens his textbook, and thankfully his table mates have not noticed him yet. He turns up his music a little louder, and starts reading through his textbook. It’s boring as hell, but Keith manages to prevent his eyes from glazing over. He even manages to absorb every third word or so and dutifully highlights important concepts. 

Keith’s twenty minutes into a decent study groove when his phone vibrates. Keith ignores it— it’s under four pages of turned paper, and he knows if he flips the pages of the book back to get his phone, he’s going to just go ahead and close the book altogether. He knows sliding his hand underneath the sheets and taking the phone is an option, but Keith knows that’ll completely throw him off track and he’s trying to be a model student so that he doesn’t have to think about this course while he’s encouraging his snail across a platform in Spokane in a week.

His phone vibrates again, and Keith ignores it. A blissful two minutes pass before it vibrates again, and Keith heaves a sigh as he decides to check it, just in case it’s one of his idiot friends calling for help. He squints when the screen says  _ Shiro _ and is about to unlock the phone when he feels something poke his side. He turns to see who’s trying to get his attention and almost rips his headphones out of his ears when he sees Shiro crouching beside his table, grinning at Keith.

“That’s just me,” Shiro says, and Keith’s eyes widen. “I was telling you to look up, but you didn’t even check your phone so I thought I’d come over instead.”

“I, uh,” Keith blinks, still trying to register that Shiro’s materialized beside him like a vision in a white Henley. “I was studying. Sorry.”

“I don’t want to bother you,” Shiro says, placing a hand on Keith’s back. Keith’s not a small guy but  _ god _ . Shiro’s hand is so big. “Just wanted to say hi.”

Keith slams his textbook shut without thinking, startling Shiro and a few of the still-chattering nerds at the table. 

“I have time,” He says, in a voice he hopes comes off infinitely smoother than he looks right now. His hair’s up in a greasy ponytail, he’s wearing a pink and yellow plaid shirt, and he’s pretty sure his jeans haven’t seen the inside of a laundry machine since the beginning of the new semester. In his defense he didn’t know that his friend - frenemy? Shiro? - with benefits was going to show up out of nowhere in the library of  _ his _ university.

Turns out, Shiro’s on a group tour of the University when he had spotted Keith in the library. He’s already long accepted his offer, but he wants to look around the campus as much as possible before he moves in. He’s also got some people he knows in town, so he’s planning to kill two birds with one stone. That’s what he tells Keith at least ten minutes later, when they’re in the cafe adjacent to the library. 

“It’s so that I’m not wandering around like an idiot on the first day,” Shiro explains through a mouthful of chocolate danish. Keith had asked Shiro what he wanted to do, and Shiro had told him that he had been up since four and desperately needed some coffee.  “I already feel weird being an older student.”

“There’s lots of older students here,” Keith points out. He’s got a hazelnut latte and a slice of carrot cake sitting in front of him, courtesy of Shiro, and it feels like the only real food he’s eaten in a week. “Plus, you’re not that much older.”

“I kinda look it though,” Shiro says sheepishly, running his fingers through his hair, and Keith squints and tilts his head. “What?”

“You’ll be fine,” Keith picks up the miniature biscotti beside his latte and jabs it in Shiro’s direction. “Plus, I’m here, right? I’ll help you out.”

“Will you?” Shiro asks, raising an eyebrow and crooking a smile. He nudges Keith’s ankle under the table, and Keith gives him a light kick in return. “Isn’t that fraternizing with the enemy?”

Keith rolls his eyes and tries to step on Shiro’s toes in earnest. Shiro manages to pull his feet out in time but the table rattles as his thighs hit the underside. 

“How long are you here for?” Keith asks, making one last attempt to get at Shiro with his feet, cursing when Shiro barely ducks in time.

“Till tomorrow afternoon,” Shiro says, and Keith hums.

“Got anything planned?” He asks, and Shiro raises an eyebrow. “I can show you around town a little if you want.”

Keith’s not quite sure what he’s going to show Shiro exactly in this sleepy university town, but something in him that kind of flutters at the sight of having Shiro here with him outside of a competition, and the fact that Shiro had saw him and decided to ditch his tour group to sit in a cramped cafe with Keith.

“I have to go see a family friend in a couple of hours,” Shiro replies. “And I have an appointment to look at an apartment tomorrow afternoon. But nothing between tonight and then.”

“I can show you a couple of bars,” Keith offers, and Shiro looks interested enough to continue. “If you let me know where you’re staying, I can come by in the morning and I can take you to the three cool places there are in the city.”

“A date?” Shiro clutches his chest, and flutters his eyelashes. Keith tries his best not to go pink.”I’m flattered.”

“I can’t afford dates,” Keith grumbles, wiping away the crumbs from the corner of his mouth. “We have to hang out like every other university student.”

Shiro laughs at that, and Keith tries to gulp down as much of his latte as possible so that he can hide his smile.

“Don’t you have to study?” Shiro raises his eyebrows, and Keith shrugs. “I don’t want to be a bother.”

“I do have to study,” Keith replies honestly. “But I also love to procrastinate. Which by the way, bad habit. Don’t do it when you start here.”

“Thanks for the advice,” Shiro says dryly, but grins around his coffee anyways. “And yeah, I’d like to hang out then.”

“Good,” Keith sips, and presses his lips together. A question crosses his mind, but he has no idea if it’s too forward. It doesn’t  _ seem _ too forward, but Keith’s also not slept more than four hours per day for the past week and he feels like his social barriers have somewhat weakened. Also, he didn’t expect Shiro to materialize out of nowhere. He’s still not sure if this is just a dream.  “So you said you had a couple of hours to kill, right?”

  
  


* * *

  
  


By the time Keith's at the door to his room, his brain’s already buzzing and Shiro’s got an arm wrapped around his front, kissing the nape of Keith’s neck as Keith fiddles with his keys. He almost drops them when he feels a small nip at the knob of his spine, and feels more than hears the vibrations of Shiro’s laugh.

The walk back to his dorm had felt unusually long and quick at the same time. Shiro had spent most of the time asking Keith about how life was at university, and time and again Keith had to tell Shiro that too many people knew what exactly Keith did in his free time for Keith to have any semblance of proper popularity. Shiro doesn’t really seem to care about this though, and tried to pull Keith under a tree every now and then to try and make out.

As soon as the door’s open, Shiro’s herding them in with urgency. He spins Keith around and is about to lean in when Keith presses a thumb against the seam of his mouth.

“The door,” Keith says, trying to weasel out of Shiro’s grip. “I gotta get the door.”

“Roommate’s out for the day for sure?” Shiro asks, and there’s something anticipatory about the way he says it that sends a thrill up along Keith’s spine. 

“God, I don’t know,” Keith kicks off one shoe and peels off his sock. Determined, he slides it over the knob and doesn’t bother to check if it stays when he slams the door shut behind him. Lance says he’s not going to be back till later in the evening, but Keith has messaged him anyways telling him to stay out.  “There, if he didn’t read my text, we should be good.”

Keith slides out of his other shoe, and is about to ask Shiro if he wants any water or maybe something out of Keith’s secret snack stash but he’s barely opened his mouth before Shiro’s occupying it with a heated kiss. He feels Shiro smile against his lips and Keith can’t help but grin back. He feels the large hands drift under his sweatshirt and push up and Keith steps back, allowing Shiro to yank off his shirt.

“Wow,” Shiro whistles as he gives Keith a once over. Before Keith can respond he adds a, “Training for the upcoming tournament, huh?”

“You’re the worst,” Keith rolls his eyes but grabs the hem of Shiro’s shirt so that he can press their bare chests together. Shiro smiles down at him and Keith thinks his heart skips a beat at it. He’s pretty sure he’s ruined because Shiro is so genuinely nice and handsome in a way Keith knows won’t be easy to come across again. But before he can think any further, Shiro leans down to swoop him up in another kiss.

It doesn’t take long before they’re both on Keith’s bed, making out enthusiastically as Shiro shrugs out of his pants. He flips them over so that Keith’s on his back and he's bracketing Keith with his thick, powerful thighs.

“If we’re hanging out tonight,” Shiro says, a little breathless. “Stay at my hotel for the night. It’ll save you time in the morning.”

“Yeah?” Keith places a hand in the centre of a broad chest and curls his fingers. “You want me there for convenience?”

Shiro laughs and ducks and kisses Keith’s jaw, starting a soft and wet trail downwards. Keith tilts his head to get a proper look at Shiro and sees the muscles of his shoulders flex. He’s reminded yet again of that Calvin Klein ad that’s still sitting under his bed, and Keith’s so,  _ so _ happy he gets to see the real thing sans slime trails. He also removes the words slime trail from his lexicon immediately in favour of focusing on the current task at hand and not killing the mood completely.

Shiro grins around Keith's zipper and pulls down. Keith thinks he's about to have an aneurysm right then and there because he’s never been on the receiving end of such a predatory look from someone  _ this _ hot before. But because Keith’s life is nothing but a series of curses, just as Shiro digs his thumbs into the waistband of his jeans and tugs, he hears the click of the key turning the lock. Both of them freeze as the knob starts to turn, and Keith shoots Shiro a panicked look.

“I’m busy,” Keith calls out, and he hears a scoff on the other end.

“With  _ what _ ?” Lance starts and starts to push the door open. 

“I have company—” Keith starts, but it’s for nothing because Lance opens the door and Keith and Shiro made a poor decision to make out on top of the sheets, thus having nothing to yank over their bodies to cover the fact that they’re both half naked. Keith thinks they might have had a chance to at least jump apart from each other, but Shiro seems to be frozen on top of him with a smile of a man about to face his death.

“Huh,” Lance says as the door swings open. Hunk’s beside him, staring at his phone and when he looks up, his bewildered expression matches Lance’s. “Wow Keith, didn’t know you had it in you— wait, is that who I think it is?”

Keith and Shiro exchange a panicked look, before Shiro closes his eyes and sighs. Slowly, he turns his head to look over his shoulder and gives Lance and Hunk what Keith hopes is an extremely friendly smile.

“Hi Lance,” Shiro says, amicably enough. “And friend. I don’t think we’ve met before?”

“Hunk,” Hunk supplies helpfully, and it’s the last word anyone gets in before the pieces fall to place in Lance’s brain and the situation immediately jumps to Defcon One.

“ _You’re sleeping with the enemy_?” Lance squawks, gesturing wildly towards Shiro. He’s almost lunging at them, and Keith watches woefully as the sock on the doorknob slides off. 

“I told you I’m busy!” Keith retorts, and he can see Lance grow steadily red. He yanks his jeans back up, and the action of it has Shiro scrambling off of him. “I  _ texted _ you!”

“Be more specific next time,” Lance sounds almost incredulous. “But  _ Shiro _ ?  _ Really _ ?”

“That’s not healthy dude,” Hunk pipes up from behind Lance. Keith sees him backing away slowly, and knows within ten seconds Hunk’s either going to have his phone out or would have completely dipped from the situation. “You shouldn’t be uh, you shouldn’t be…”

Hunk gestures towards the general area of Keith and Shiro, and Keith knows his face has gone completely red. Shiro, to his credit, looks somewhat composed from where he’s sitting up almost shielding Keith from the view of the others, though Keith can see the small flush at the nape of his neck.

“You shouldn’t be romancing someone who insults you so publicly,” Hunk finishes lamely, dropping his hand. 

“He’s just a friend,” Keith tries to argue, and Lance shakes his head. 

“You’re not supposed to be friends with someone who makes fun of you  _ to your face _ ,” Lance’s voice is almost straining as he gestures wildly to Shiro. “Let alone bang them, Keith. Jesus Christ.”

“Really not healthy,” Hunk says, and Keith yanks a pillow out from underneath him to lob at his friends.

Lance ducks and it hits Hunk square in the face. Hunk replies with nothing but a sage shake of his head, and Keith thinks he’s acting really high and mighty for someone who had called Keith a week ago because he was plastered and shoeless and lost at a bar that was less than a five minute walk away from his place.

“We’re going to have to talk about this,” Lance says grimly, and Keith groans. 

“We don’t because it’s nothing,” Keith snaps, and lobs another pillow. “Now get out.”

Lance grumbles something under his breath, and he grudgingly back-tracks out of the room. Hunk gently closes the door behind them, and Keith can hear multiple muffled exclamation marks retreat in the distance. He lets out a large and weary sigh as he flops back onto his bed. He turns his head to look at Shiro, but sees that Shiro’s already standing up and pulling his jeans on

“Are you going?” Keith asks, trying to roll over onto his belly to reach for Shiro. It’s maybe bad timing or a figment of his imagination, but Keith’s pretty sure that Shiro slightly steps out of his reach. 

“Don’t want to offend your friends anymore,” Shiro says, and his voice has a joking tilt to it but his smile’s not quite reaching his eyes. “I think they might give you grief if you run away for the night too.”

Keith doesn’t blame Shiro; the mood’s been effectively taken out back and shot in a merciless death. Shiro’s right and Keith’s also not the type to sound desperate, so Keith shrugs off the clear cancellation of their plans for later today. He’s definitely going to murder Lance for ruining what was going to be a perfect end to a perfect afternoon, and for what would have been an undoubtedly  _ fantastic _ night. 

“Well you said you’re here till tomorrow afternoon, right?” Keith asks, and Shiro pauses before nodding.

“Yeah,” He replies. “Yeah, I guess.”

“I’ll text you,” Keith says. “We can still hang out in the morning.”

“Sure,” Shiro replies, not with a lot of conviction or any of the easiness they shared before. “I’ll see you around, Keith.”

There’s something odd about the way Shiro’s holding himself, but Keith chalks it up to the embarrassment of the situation. God knows he’s still not finished going through all the stages of mortification, so he stands up to help Shiro tug on his shirt. He opens his arms up for an embrace, but instead of clinging on to Keith and giving him a sweet kiss to tide him over till the next time, Shiro gives him a brief hug before he pulls away. Something funny crosses over his face, and he leans in to peck Keith on the cheek, and by the time Keith blinks, Shiro’s out of the room.

It’s weird, and it makes his heart beat oddly. Keith shakes his head and blames it on the situation that had unfolded. But two hours later, after a lecture from Lance and Hunk that he most definitely pays no attention to, he texts Shiro and asks him what time he should swing by in the morning. Shiro texts with a  _ I can’t anymore, something came up. Sorry _   and it leaves a weird taste in Keiths mouth.

 

* * *

  
  


Keith tries not to read into it too much, tries not to let it drop his gut to the ground to much. But something in his instincts is telling him something’s gone wrong. Shiro doesn’t text him his daily atrocious joke, and Keith  _ really _ tries to not read into that too much. He decides that compartmentalizing the emotion and storing it away is the way to go, especially since he only has around a week till he sees Shiro anyways.

It’s not like he has the time to think about it either, because school has decided to kick his ass straight into his next life. The days pass by in a work-induced blur, and Keith’s almost too busy to notice that Shiro hasn’t texted him at all, and hasn’t been active on his social media either. Almost.

By the time the next Thursday rolls around and Keith’s fresh off a brutal test and staring down a fourteen hour drive from his town up to Washington. Lance and Hunk are both coming with him because Hunk claims that his yellow F150 will make the drive and paying for gas is a little cheaper than paying for a flight and the headache that comes with flying with snails. They’re splitting the driving into shifts so that they don’t have to dish out for a motel, and Keith curses his inability to make friends with any of the richer students in his classes.

So Keith’s feeling a little emotional, especially when he’s trying to drag out one of his duffle bags while packing. A magazine drags out with the bag, and Keith recognizes it as the one that’s got Shiro’s special ad at it. Because Keith’s slept maybe five hours in three days, and has substituted redbull for water, he feels a deep emotional pang resonate within him.

Automatically, his hand starts reaching for the phone on top of his bed. He can see his snails stare in judgement from where their terrarium’s perched on top of his desk, but he decides to ignore it. They’re the whole reason for his predicament to begin with.

_ Hey _ , he taps out on his phone. Or he thinks he taps out. When he woke up from his twenty minute sleep this morning, he’s pretty sure he had a caffeine-induced hallucination, and has been slightly unsure of his reality since then. The reply comes almost instantly.

_ Hey. _

That’s enough for Keith to forget that he’s been agonizing over Shiro not texting him back for a week. Later on, he’s going to completely blame it on the lack of inhibitions that come with not having gotten a human amount of rest. For now, he texts a short,  _ Gonna be in Spokane tmrw night. Got plans? _

It takes a good ten minutes of silence and another five minute self pep-talk before Keith decides to start packing again. Hunk’s driving the first shift, the overnight one because he’s had a full twenty four hours to recuperate from being whacked by school. Keith’s looking forward to get a solid six hours of sleep, even if it’s in the back of a pickup. The tournament doesn’t start till Saturday, so Keith’s got plans to K.O as soon as they reach their hotel in Washington. If Shiro doesn’t reply.

But Shiro does reply, when they’re loading the pickup. Keith’s just trying to arrange the terrarium on Lance’s lap so that the snails don’t get jostled too much, when he feels his phone vibrate. He tells himself to relax, that there’s a whole other host of people who text Keith and there’s no reason to rush. He takes his time in arranging the three duffle bags, the cooler with the snail treats, and practice track into the bed of the pickup truck, and even takes a minute to confirm with Hunk that they’re going to do the switchover somewhere in Klamath county. 

Keith waits till he’s safely secured in the back seat and Hunk’s started the car, to pull out his cell phone. The message is in fact from Shiro, and when Keith opens it, he’s faintly glad that he hadn’t opened it earlier. If the way his heart is dropping now had happened earlier, Hunk and Lance would have had to peel him off from the pavement and would have probably half-assed the job. 

_ We should talk _ , the text reads.  _ I don’t think I can do this. _

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Join me next chapter for the conclusion to the snail racing world's very own soap opera...I can't think of any snail related TV soap pun to make. Snails of Our Lives?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ON THIS EPISODE OF _AS THE WORLD ESCARGOES..._

Somehow, Keith keeps it together on the long road trip. Sleeping for the nine hours he’s not driving definitely helps, even though it’s a fitful sleep that he does through mostly just to avoid dealing with his emotions. Keith’s not bad at handling himself, but the first twenty four hours after going through a breakup are the worst.

He knows this doesn’t exactly qualify as a breakup, given that they weren’t _together_ together to begin with, but he can’t help but feel rubbed raw. It feels out of the blue, but he knows that he must have done _something_ to warrant Shiro dropping him cold. He replays the last time they were together in his head, searching for where he could have mistepped, but comes up empty handed.

So instead, he bundles his sweater up into a pillow and props it up against the door of the truck and dozes through most of the drive. Lance and Hunk have picked up on the fact that there’s something wrong with Keith, but Keith likes to sleep through the discomfort whenever he can and they don’t prod. Not till Keith’s on the last driving shift anyways, and Lance is passed out in the back seat while Hunk’s sitting in the passenger seat. He’s got Keith’s terrarium in a secure hold, and lets the first half an hour of Keith’s leg of the trip go by in silence before he pipes up.

“Hey man,” he says. “Are you okay? You seem really quiet.”

“I’m good,” Keith says with no heart. He’s lucky that his voice is naturally kind of flat to begin with, but less lucky that his friend’s still able to tell that he’s lying. “I swear.”

“Is it to do with Jiro?” Hunk asks, and Keith immediately corrects him with a, “It’s Shiro.”

“Sorry,” Hunk says, raising one hand while keeping the other secure around the terrarium. “You know that I don’t pay attention to these things.”

“Nothing happened with him,” Keith says, pouring in extra concentration on the road ahead. Hunk shrugs and gives Keith a little thump on his shoulder.

“You looked a little more murderous than usual when you were passed out back there,” he says easily.  “Normally you just look like an angry baby.”

“No I don’t,” Keith grumbles and Hunk snorts.

“Yeah?” Hunk teases, nudging Keith again. “Who said? Shiro?”

Keith opts not to reply; he tries instead to visibly frown instead. Clearly it doesn’t work, because he can feel the pitying look Hunk’s giving him in spades. Hunk thankfully doesn’t pursue it any further, either out of respect or out of not feeling like taking on the emotional burden at the moment. Keith doesn’t blame him if it’s the latter, because the three of them are historically horrible at giving each other any sort of romantic advice, so they try to avoid it altogether.

By the time they finally reach the hotel they’re staying at for the tournament, Keith feels as emotionally exhausted as he does physically. Even though his sadness-induced sleep had lasted hours, it had been a fitful few hours in the back of a bumpy truck. Hunk and Lance offer to take him out for a drink to get his mind off things, and Lance tells him that they’ll wingman Keith so that Keith can find someone better. It sounds like an objectively terrible idea so Keith tells them to go ahead without him and pour a drink out for him, and decides to go crash at their hotel room.

He knows that Shiro wants to talk to him tonight, maybe. Keith thinks he’s feeling a little too messy at the moment and doesn’t know if he’d be able to deal with seeing Shiro while the words of his text message are still playing over and over again in his head.  

So Keith settles for a quiet night of dicing up a small cucumber for his snails. He’s not at the point yet where he’s going to confide in them about his problems. Mostly because they don’t have ears, but also because Keith’s paranoid his friends will walk in on him getting emotional as he tells his two snails that he’s not sure what he did to push Shiro away.

  
Shiro texts him again close to midnight, asks him a _Are you up_? and Keith has to refrain from the knee jerk reaction of texting back. But he’s got an early morning the next day, and the last thing Keith wants to do is think about this, especially when he’s in one of the first races on the docket. He knows there’s no physical exertion actually needed on his part, but he’s sure that his snails feed off his energy as well. So he turns off his phone and rolls over in his bed, willing himself into a troubled sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

By the time Keith drags himself out of bed for the first race of the morning, he feels tired as he looks. Hunk and Lance try their best to give him a pep talk in the locker room, but they’re both kind of hung over and do a totally shitty job at it. Lance gives him his usual _If you lose any of this we wasted all this time and money for nothing_ speech, and Keith gives him his usual _Stay at home next time you suck as a coach_ retort, but there’s not a lot of heart in it.

The racing association has managed to appropriate a tiny, out-of season hockey rink for this race, and the seats are packed. Keith can smell the fries and the hot dogs in the air, and it’s making him nauseaus moreso than usual. The rink is divided into two, with a junior competition and a senior competition occuring on each end, and Keith’s side has a much louder audience.

He can’t concentrate on it though. Keith’s still not replied to Shiro, but Shiro hasn’t texted him again. Keith reasons that he needs to pour his concentration into the morning race, even though he feels distracted during the entire event.

He stands around the mini race track, one built to look like the Santa Anita Park, audience stands and spindly palms and all. Each competitor has placed their snail behind a small blue gated stall; as soon as the horn blares, the gates will automatically go up and the race will officially start. Keith’s glad he hasn’t built his rep around being a loud and showy competitor; he doesn’t know if he has the heart to stand and yell and cheer on his snail in as enthusiastic manner as possible for the roughly three minutes it takes for her to get around the track.

He can hear a few people chanting his name. Like always, it’s probably led by Lance, with the help of Hunk, followed by a couple of people who aren’t quite sure why they’re here to begin with so they’re just joining in with the loudest guy there.

 _“READY_ ,”  The announcer booms over the PA system.

Keith knows that Shiro’s competing in the adjacent rink right now, the slightly bigger one reserved for people who also get social media sponsorships, and wonders if he’s thinking about Keith or if he’s focused on the race.

“ _STEADY_ ,”

It’s a stupid thought to have because of course, Shiro’s focusing on the race. Keith needs to too, because he needs to place high in this race and the next race if he wants to scoot into Monday’s round without any effort. If he does bad here, his race tomorrow’s going to carry more weight.

“ _SLOW!_ ” The announcer declares, and the horn blares.

The gates raise and Keith’s fellow competitors start yelling encouragement at their snails. There’s a lot of hand waving and cheering but Keith keeps to himself, watching as Red slowly inches around the track. Occasionally, he throws some encouraging words forward, but he knows that there are cameras there and he’d rather be dead than be filmed losing his shit at a snail racing competition. No matter how much money it makes him. Lights flash from the camera and Keith has a fleeting moment where he wonders how exactly his life got to this point; moping over a guy who’s his enemy but is ( _was_ ) his - Friend? Lover? - in private, a guy who he met through a shared passion of watching slimy creatures inch along a black cloth track.

Keith ends up placing sixth.

It’s terrible but not unexpected given the emotional turmoil Keith’s been experiencing. Keith knows it doesn’t directly relate to whether or not his snail decides to move across the track, but he likes to think that maybe she picks up on his feelings and moves empathetically. It’s a pain in the ass though; he’s placed so bad today that no matter what the outcome of his next race is, tomorrow’s race is going to count.

When he plucks Red off the track, Keith feels the phone in his back pocket buzz. He takes a quick look around to make sure no enterprising reporter is making a beeline towards him. Keith sees Lance and Hunk in the distance but they’re still green around the gills. Maybe they’re experiencing a second wave of their hangover or maybe they’re experiencing crushing disappointment, but they don’t look like they’re going to want to move any time soon. He pulls out his phone, and sees a text from Shiro.

 _Can we meet this evening?_ It reads. _Whenever your last race is done. I’d rather talk in person._

Keith’s feels his stomach drop through the floor, and the words make him incredibly nervous. But he knows he can’t put this off any longer. Whatever _this_ is. However, he can put texting Shiro off until later, and he does. He gets lunch with his friends and they tell him he looks a little nervous, and tell him that he’s going to make the next race count because they didn’t drive fourteen hours for nothing. Despite their absolutely terrible pep talk, Keith can hear some underlying current of concern in their voice.

  
He waits until right before his second race of the day to reply back to Shiro. He’s got thirty seconds before he has to bring Red’s portable terrarium out onto the tr ack, and thinks that this is as good a time as any to send out an _okay sure where_ and then forget about it in the furor of the race. Sending the message isn’t quite cathartic, but it does put him at ease a little because as much as he hates emoting, he’s going to at least get to see Shiro’s face. He feels just the slightest bit better, and places second in the race.

 

* * *

 

Keith checks his phone for the fifth time in the fifteen seconds it’s taken for the elevator to make its slow descent. He’s left his snails and his friends back at the hotel room to meet Shiro in one of the more private lobbies of the hotel, away from prying eyes.  It’s beside one of the smaller boardrooms, and it doesn’t take Keith long to snake through the first floor lobby and find the small plaque indicating where Meeting Room F is.

He kind of wishes it did though, because he turns down an empty hall and sees Shiro sitting on one of armchairs, frowning at his phone. Keith’s feeling incredibly jittery as he sees Shiro’s broad shoulders hunched over, and slows down. Keith is hoping at any rate that his nervousness isn’t written across his face; he tries to school himself into something as non-emotive and casual as possible as he approaches.

“Hey,” he calls out, and Shiro looks up from his phone. He straightens up in his armchair as Keith takes a seat on the couch across from him.

“Congrats on your race,” Keith says, smoothening out his sweatpants. Shiro placed first in his morning race and second in his evening race. Even though he hasn’t placed second in a while, he’s still in the top rankings for the tournament.

“You too,” Shiro replies, and Keith can’t help but snort.

“It’s the worst I’ve ever done,” he points out, and Shiro has the dignity to look at least a little sheepish. “But thanks, I guess.”

Shiro presses his lips together in a firm line and Keith thinks that he’s derailed whatever opener Shiro had. Shiro doesn’t say anything, which unsettles Keith. Even though they were just casual, Keith feels like he’s staring down the muzzle of a breakup, and the mounting anxiety is getting worse and worse by the second.

“So are you all set to start school?” Keith asks, before the silence starts to eat at him.

“Yeah,” Shiro nods, and lets out a short sigh through his nose. “Still have to find an apartment though.”

Keith’s knee jerk reaction is to offer to help Shiro, to offer to show him around town a little more so that he picks a place in a decent area. But he tamps it down because he’s got a gut feeling that this conversation is going to send things sideways for the two of them. Especially if it’s one that Shiro wanted to have it in person.

“Look,” Shiro starts. _There it is,_ Keith thinks as he steels himself. “I’m sorry I ditched last week.”

“It’s okay,” Keith replies as easily as he can, throwing in a nonchalant shrug for good measure. He’s pretty sure it looks more like a violent twitch.

“I should have been more forthcoming,” Shiro says and from the tone of his voice, Keith knows they’ve reached the moment he’s been dreading. “Keith, I can’t do this anymore.”

“Do what?” Keith says immediately, even though he knows better.

“Whatever we were doing,” Shiro replies, and the way he says it starts to fiddle with some panic button inside of Keith. He’s glad at any rate that his emotions tend to make themselves visually known a good fifteen seconds after he feels them, and he’s got that small window to reign himself in.

“I thought what we were doing was harmless,” Keith says. A moment passes;  Keith’s not quite sure he’s said the right thing because Shiro’s face falls into something that Keith would almost call disappointed.

“Yeah,” Shiro nods slowly, and drops his gaze to the ground. “For you, I guess. For me…”

He trails off and folds his hands in his lap. He closes his eyes when he speaks next, and it’s got the stiltedness of a rehearsed speech that he’s still too unprepared to deliver.

“I kind of have to protect myself from it,” Shiro says. “If we’re just messing around then I...don’t know what I’m setting myself up for. And I kind of realized that after your friends walked in on us.”

The last sentence leads to a small sort of revelation for Keith, one that has his stomach stumble a little as he mentally replays that day and the reaction that his friends had upon walking in on them.

“Must be hard,” Keith says slowly, and Shiro looks up at him. “I guess it’d kill your rep if Lance accidentally spilled to the press or whatever, right?”

Shiro frowns, but he nods. “Yeah, I wouldn’t say _kill_ it, but-”

“But you can lose your modelling contract, right?” Keith tries to prod, determined to extract a fully formed response. “If they find out you’ve been secretly having a fling with the competition?”

Shiro sinks back in his armchair and Keith takes it as a confirmation. He curls his fingers in his lap, letting his nails dig into his palms.

“Either way,” Shiro continues. “I don’t think continuing this would be fair to us.”

“Us?” Keith raises his eyebrows.

“Yeah,” Shiro gestures to himself. “If we keep, uh— if it continues, I don’t want you to have to deal with all of this.”

Keith’s smart enough to infer what Shiro’s saying. He’s about two seconds away from feeling completely crushed, but he nods along like he gets it, like it’s understandable.

“Yeah,” He agrees, even though every fibre of his being is telling him to put up some sort of argument. Shiro has his jaw set though, and Keith doesn’t even know what he can say right now that won’t make him look like an idiot.

“Shouldn’t be too bad, right?” Shiro asks, and his voice starts to show some forced cheeriness. “As you said, it was just harmless. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of nothing.”

Something about that statement twists Keith wrong, doesn’t sit well with him. It almost feels false, and Keith suddenly feels the compulsion to address it, his reticence falling away.

“Shiro,” he starts, but he’s cut off by a shrill ringing.

“Shit,” Shiro swears, staring at his phone. It blares back angrily at him, and he looks back up at Keith. “Sorry, Keith, I-”

“No worries,” Keith waves him off, and stands up. His legs feel like they’re shaking in the worst way, and all he wants to do is high-tail it back to his own hotel room. “You should take that. And I should go.”

“I’ll see you around?” Shiro asks, and Keith nods as he picks up the call. He takes it as his cue to leave, and stalks out of the hallway as Shiro starts talking to his coach.

He waits till he’s back safely in his hotel room with confirmation from his friends that they’re currently trying to destroy each other at skee ball in a local arcade, before he lets his face crumple. Keith manages to keep it together for the five minutes he needs to rinse a cabbage leaf in the bathroom sink and drop it into the terrarium. His snails give him a pitying look, though Keith thinks he might be self projecting.

At any rate, he doesn’t think they’re in any place to judge; he got Rouge for Red after one night where he got really drunk with a few people from his philosophy elective and a heated argument started over whether or not his snail got lonely or not. Keith kind of wishes he had some larger force that’d go online and order _him_ a new friend in a drunken stupor, because then he wouldn’t have to navigate whatever just happened with Shiro.

As soon as he flops down on the bed, Keith feels the hot prickle in the corners of his eyes. Crying is a loser’s game, so he rolls over onto his belly to bury his face into his pillow. It’s pathetic, but if he’s not emoting out in the open, he can at least deny it happened.

* * *

 

 

Keith crashes and burns in his Sunday morning race.

It’s not his snail’s fault. It can never be her fault, as Keith’s pretty sure she’s not quite aware of what exactly she’s doing. It’s Keith’s fault, because he got a grand total of two consecutive hours of sleep since last night and has been feeling completely crushed since the talk with Shiro. It’s all he can think about, all that plays over in his head. He’s pretty sure he wasn’t this hung up over his last breakup, and this technically doesn’t even qualify as a breakup.

He’s so spaced out that he doesn’t notice Red crawling over one of her other competitors. Each racer has a timed fifteen seconds to pull their snail off if it mounts another before they’re disqualified, and it doesn’t even register in Keith’s head what Red’s done till a full twenty three have passed and Lance is yelling at him from the sidelines. By then, the announcer is already announcing that Keith, Last Name Unknown, is officially disqualified from the race.

Keith snaps to attention, and immediately begins apologizing as he pulls Red off. She curls slightly, and hearing the announcer repeat the fact that Keith just got disqualified makes him go red.

“I’m sorry,” He says to the owner of the other snail, a sandy haired girl with glasses that looks _incredibly_ familiar. “So, so sorry.”

She squints at him in return, and opens her mouth, but Keith turns away to drop Red into her mini terrarium. His face is burning, and he can’t believe he got distracted enough to get disqualified over something so stupid. As soon as he steps off the stage, Lance thumps his back hard with a “What the hell was that, man?” in an incredulous voice. Keith shoves him off and ducks his head, deciding instead to power walk towards the rotunda doors of the rink.

It takes a lot of effort to not just break out into a run, but Keith doesn’t want to embarass himself in public any further. He manages to duck and weave and lose his friends, and kick a discarded beer can down the hall in frustration.

Later on in the afternoon, he sits in his hotel room washroom, Hunk and Lance banging on the door outside. It’s masochistic for Keith, but he’s watching Shiro’s interview because he _knows_ what the reporters will ask him. And he’s absolutely not surprised when a smarmy one that kind of looks like Lance shoves a microphone in Shiro’s face and asks him what exactly he thinks about his biggest competition, the up-and-coming protege of the racing world, losing out so badly in his morning round.

Keith mentally prepares himself for whatever jab is coming his way. He thinks it’ll be almost comforting to have Shiro insult him— it’ll be a good indicator that maybe things can go back to normal, and they can be friends after all. But Shiro presses his lips together and shakes his head on camera.

“It happens to the best of us,” He says, and turns away. The reporters try to hound him down, but he keeps telling him that he’s got no further comment. Somehow, that hurts more.

When he leaves the washroom, he tells Hunk and Lance that he’d rather start the trek home this evening than extend their hotel stay. There’s no point, he says, if he’s not even competing the next day. Keith’s pretty sure he looks extra pathetic, because Hunk and Lance agree without a word.

They do, however, get him to spill on the way home under threat of leaving him on the roadside (but making sure his snails have a comfortable ride home).

So Keith grudgingly starts from the time he met Shiro. As soon as he starts getting into the details of the first hookup, Lance starts making a retching sound to drown him out. Keith leans forward from the backseat to flick at his head before jumping forward to what Shiro is actually like as a person and how weird Shiro had acted after he had left their dorm room. The two of them listen intently, and Keith knows they’re paying attention because Hunk hasn’t been slyly turning up the volume of the radio.

“I can’t believe you’re sleeping with the enemy,” Lance interjects no less than five times throughout Keith’s story, and each time Keith responds with an eyeroll and a “It’s competitive _snail racing_.”

Hunk takes Keith’s side on it, especially when Keith reveals that Shiro’s only mean for show, and that he doesn’t actually mean what he says nor is he that rude  as a person. Hunk in general is amused by the fact that people who race snails also have to develop media personalities and make actual money doing so. Keith tells them about how Shiro’s actually pretty nice, and tells them that he’s looking for ways to transition into a softer persona for the public, and tells them about the text that Shiro had sent him. Hunk and Lance are silent for a full minute, before Lance finally speaks.

“Okay,” Lance says slowly.  “So why are you so hung up?”

“What do you mean?” Keith asks, and sees Hunk and Lance exchange a look.

“Well it was nothing right?” Lance says, flipping down his visor so that he can stare at Keith through the mirror. “So why are you hung up?”

“What?” Keith frowns. “It wasn’t just nothing. Not for me, at least.”

“You sure?” Hunk says.  “Because that’s what you told us that day. It was nothing.”

“And you said it in front of him,” Lance adds. “Though it doesn’t sound like it was nothing on his part, especially if he’s constantly trying to make nice. And, er, other things.”

Keith blinks. Ten seconds of silence pass, and Lance huffs.

“Don’t you see how that comes off?” Lance turns in his seat to give Keith an incredulous look. “You literally just said he’s a friend _and_ it was nothing. In front of him. Why are you twisted that he wanted to cut things off?”

“I didn’t-”  Keith starts indignantly, and then stops. And then hears an audible _click_ in his brain.“Oh.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Lance mocks, then snorts before turning back around. “Dumbass.”

“Shut up,” Keith kicks the back of his seat, and Lance continues to look unimpressed. “How was I supposed to know? I was tired!”

“So did you at least talk to him after?” Hunk asks, and Keith pauses at the question.

Keith cringes as he recounts their meeting in the lobby, because he’s finally starting to realize Things with a capital T. By the end of it, Lance has his head in his hands. Hunk keeps looking at Keith through the rearview and shaking his head, and Keith doesn’t exactly blame him. Now that he’s revisited events with an irritated third party, it stands out like a neon sign that maybe Keith’s misinterpreted a couple of things here and there.

Keith replays the conversation over and over in his head, and feels the slow build of dread that maybe he’s been the one that’s been coming off as callous and not serious about what they had been doing.

It’s killing Keith a little, because he’s starting to see now why Shiro wouldn’t want to risk anything over something that Keith had called nothing. Keith stares at the hot dog shaped air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror as a slow montage of every single moment he and Shiro have shared plays through his head. Keith thinks that maybe he does deserve to be left on the side of the road.

“Are you still with us?” Hunk says, and his voice sounds distant and far away. “Keith?”

“He’s contemplating life,” Lance tells Hunk. “Leave him alone. He’s coming to term with his wrongs.”

“I hate you both,” Keith says but with little heart, because he’s still internally kicking himself for acting like an idiot in what’s probably an irreversible way.

“Not as much as you hate yourself,” Lance singsongs, and there’s too much truth in it at the moment for Keith to retaliate beyond banging his foot against the back of Lance’s seat again.

By the time they’re two thirds of the way home, Lance catches a country radio station talking about the results of the snail race. He turns it up to listen just as the DJ announces that in a career-low, Takashi Shirogane has placed fifth overall.

 

* * *

 

 

Keith mopes the first day back— there’s no other way to describe it. He sits and stares at his wall for the first twenty minutes of the day, and functions the rest of the time on autopilot. He manages to have a meeting with his advisor who spends more time staring at their papers than at Keith, and stands and listens to a charity spiel from someone on the curb. He makes continuous eye contact with them as they talk and he zones out and by the time they’re done, he hands them a twenty. They’re too unnerved to ask him to fill out the regular donor card, and he thinks it’s for the better.                                                                                          

Lance and Hunk corner him in the main cafeteria and try to talk to him, but it goes in one ear for Keith and out the other. Keith picks pathetically at his mac n’ cheese while Hunk starts reading him freshly-googled inspirational quotes from his phone. It distracts him long enough for Lance to take his phone from where it had been tucked under the curve of his plate.

“You should really put a password on this,” Lance says idly as he unlocks Keith’s phone.

“What?” Keith frowns, then grows panicked as he finally registers what Lance has in his hands. “Hey, give that back!”

Lance sticks an arm out and mashes his palm against Keith’s face as he starts to type with his other hand. Keith grunts and strains and is two seconds away from _actually_ making Lance sorry he stole his phone; Lance senses this as well and tosses the phone across the table. Hunk catches the phone and finishes up whatever Lance had been typing, and Keith’s eyes bug out when he hears the soft _shwoop_ of the message sending.

Hunk throws the phone back to Lance, and Lance hits a couple more keys before Keith pounces on him and tries to wrestle the phone out of his hand. It provides a brief emotional interlude where instead of sadness, Keith feels an immense amount of irritation, and he snatches his phone back from Lance.

“What’d you send?” he demands, and Lance raises both his hands.

“I deleted it,” he says simply. “So if he doesn’t reply, then you can pretend you never sent anything in the first place.”

“I didn’t,” Keith insists. “You did!”

“From your number,” Lance says happily, and Keith glares at him. He’s tempted to text Shiro, tell him that a friend got a hold of his phone, but realizes that’s going to look even _more_ pathetic.

Later on in the evening, they try to cheer him up again, try to  invite him out, try to take his phone and see if Shiro has replied. Keith doesn’t show them the ten _call me_ ’s that Shiro’s texted him since whatever Lance had send to Shiro, because then they’re going to ask why exactly Keith hasn’t called. Lance still hasn’t revealed what he messaged Shiro, and Keith doesn’t trust that he hasn’t sent some sort of insult to Shiro. Keith doesn’t have enough emotional fortitude to deal with the fallout, so he’s currently pretending that his phone’s dead until otherwise indicated.

Eventually they leave him be in his room, and he spends the evening feeding his snails strawberry slices and watching an unhealthy amount of horror movies. The day’s over before he knows it, and he gets one last text message from Shiro, asking him to call him.

Keith turns over his phone instead.

When he wakes up the next morning, he experiences a good five minutes of clarity where he realizes that he probably should show some initiative. Shiro’s texted him enough times that if Keith peeks through his own sadness for more than three seconds, it’s kind of clear that Shiro’s determined to talk to him about something. That’s about as far as his morning-fogged brain will go, so he opens the texts, and sends a quick _sorry, I’m free to talk right now if you want_ , and waits.

And waits.

He knows it’s ridiculous to wonder why it’s been fifteen minutes and he hasn’t received any text back from Shiro, because Shiro is a grown man with commitments, a schedule that Keith’s not attuned to, and is decidedly not a moping university student. Not yet, anyways. So Keith tosses his phone on his bed, and tries to go about his day.

Not that his day is packed to begin with. Instead of staring at the ceiling of his room, he starfishes on the main quad and stares up at the sky instead. He’s left his phone behind, so he’s not keeping track of time. It’s fine though, because the only duty he had all day had been to return a library book he forgot he had taken out to begin with. By the time he had done that, it had been the afternoon, and he had still gotten no reply.

Keith looks at the clouds passing above him, and wonders if Shiro’s texted back yet. Wonders if maybe he should have brought his phone with him on the quad, just incase. Wonders why suddenly the sky’s blocked out, and someone’s staring him down from above. Keith squints at the backlit figure for a moment, before recognition dawns upon him.

“Hey,” he says, looking up at the short girl. “You’re...Pidge?”

“Katie off the tracks,” the girl replies. “Keith, right? I thought I recognized you when I was walking by.”

“Yeah,” Keith says, and sits up. “You go here?”

“I was gonna say the same for you,” she says, and sticks out a hand. Keith grasps it for a moment before standing up, and dusting off his pants. “You looked vaguely familiar when I first saw you, but I couldn’t place where.”

“I didn’t know that the sport was so popular here,” Keith says, and Katie lets out a short laugh.

“I just do it because my brother and his dumb friend used to do it,” Katie replies. “And they got money doing it too. My brother thinks he’s some sort of PR prodigy now, even though it’s just because his friend’s hot.”

Keith opens his mouth to ask who her brother is, but he remembers a face from a few weeks ago that looks like an older, more masculine version of Katie. A face that had accompanied Shiro into a dimly lit bar on country night, that belonged to the guy who came to pick Shiro and his coach up from their shared house the next morning.

“Please don’t associate me with them,” Katie says before he can say anything. “For the record, I think it’s totally stupid that Shiro pretends to be mean on camera. They said it was Coran’s idea, but Matt was the one dumb enough to suggest it to begin with.”

“Ah,” Keith’s really not sure how to reply to that, so he shrugs instead. “I’m cool with it. It’s kind of funny to begin with it.”

“It’s because Coran and Matt can’t write an insult to save their life,” Katie informs him. “If they had let me do it, no one would have come out alive.”

Keith barks out a genuine laugh at that, and Katie gives him a playful shove. She asks him if he wants to get a coffee, because she has thirty minutes to kill before she has to meet a professor. He figures he needs some sort of socialization, so Keith agrees and follows her across the quad.

Keith learns that Shiro and Katie’s brother have been friends since high school, and Matt had been the one to put Shiro on to snail racing. The two of them had been fresh off duty, and had been trying to figure out where exactly they would go with their lives from there. In the interim, Matt had an impulse to try out something completely ridiculous. He was too lazy to be a coach, but they had a family friend called Coran who was a professional photographer a spacious white RV, so they roped him in to be part of their team.

Matt and Coran’s insistence on pushing Shiro’s looks above all else is the main reason they’ve turned what was a joke sport into a lucrative career. Pidge had joined around the same time, mostly so that the group could get family discounts on motel rooms, but races only intermittently, and not with as much fervour.

“If you want to get him back good, ever,” she says as she slurps up an iced coffee while Keith walks her to her building. She’s entertaining to talk to, and it’s nice meeting someone outside of his emotionally condensed group of friends. Something in the back of Keith’s head asks if he’s also just really into the fact that she’s got stories about Shiro, but he pointedly ignores it.  “I’ll give you my number. I know exactly what you can say.”

“Yeah?” Keith raises an eyebrow, and she nods as they round a corner. “Like what?”

“If you really want to hurt him, you have to make fun of the names he chose for his snails,” Katie replies. “He and Matt spent four hours on a baby name generator, just to pick the stupidest names. Ebony and Ivory?”

Keith doesn’t want to point out that his snails are just two different variations of the same colour, but he nods along anyways. Matt sounds like Lance but a little cooler, and when he points it out to Katie, she makes a face at him.

“Never call my brother cool again,” She says flatly, but she ends up taking his number anyways with a promise to give him a list of insults that’ll be better than anything her brother can even dream of.

Keith feels a little better when he gets back to his room. Normal, almost. At any rate, he’s feeling a little more optimistic when he digs his phone out from the bundle of sheets he threw it into in the morning. When he unlocks it, there’s no new messages.

 

* * *

 

 

On the third day, Keith decides to shower. It’s less because he’s realized that he needs to wash away the large amount of self-pitying he’s been doing for the past few days and more because at around eleven thirty in the morning, Lance stands over Keith’s bed and tells him he stinks.

“You went without for two weeks last semester,” Keith points out from where he’s sprawled on his bed. He’s got a bag of Doritos sitting on his chest, and has been watching funny dog videos for the past hour. He copes however he can.  “And it wasn’t even finals.”

“Because I was upset over getting dumped,” Lance says, and grabs Keith’s wrist. He starts to tug, completely disrupting Keith’s set up. “Your sadness makes you smell infinitely worse, and I think I’m going to choke.”

Keith finally acquiesces, and grudgingly slings a towel over his shoulder. He grabs his bottle of body wash and his flip flops and gives Lance the finger for good luck as he exits the room.

The shower does do him some good. Keith’s not one for long showers, but the hot spray clears his mind and he lets it steam his body till it’s pink. He soaps himself up and washes his hair for good measure, and feels a little lighter when all the grime is gone.

For the first time in the past few days, he finds himself not dwelling too hard on what had passed. He’s almost optimistic, really— if Shiro’s not going to contact him, Keith’s going to give it a couple of days before he reaches out again. If Shiro ghosts him then too, then Keith’s going to eat his feelings for a week straight at the cheapest local diner, and then pick up and move on. Hopefully. He’s just got to have faith in himself.

Keith makes it back to his room twenty minutes later, and Lance sits up as soon as he enters.

“Put some clothes on,” Lance wrinkles his nose in Keith’s direction. That had actually been Keith’s plan, but since Lance just told him to, Keith gives him a flat “no” and dumps his dirty clothes on his bed. Lance makes a face and pretends to gag as he stands up and dusts his jeans.

“I’m heading out,” Lance announces, and Keith grunts in return, busy pulling his blankets back so that he can dust his sheets. He feels a hand on his shower-wet hair and immediately jerks back. He whips around and has to step back again.

“What are you doing?” He demands, and Lance reaches over to pet his head. Oddly, he tries to smooth Keith’s hair down, even as Keith tries to flick him away.

“I’ll be gone till the evening,” Lance informs him. “Be good.”

“Please be gone longer,” Keith requests, and Lance licks a thumb before reaching for Keith’s eyebrows. Mortified, Keith jumps out of the way just in time, and Lance snickers as he grabs his hoodie off his bed. He slams the door behind him, and Keith makes a mental note to wedge something under the door so that Lance has a hard time getting back in.

Keith flops down on the bed, towel still wrapped around him. He considers putting on clothes, but since he has the room alone to himself, air drying himself seems like a more appealing option. He feels like a lighter man now; there’s something revitalizing about the strong pine scent of the 3-in-1 he used.

His phone buzzes, and though Keith’s been keeping a vigilant eye on it since he last texted Shiro, the shower has relaxed his muscles way too much for him to reach for the phone on his desk. He’s actually kind of glad he’s clean now, because when he inevitably stares at the ceiling for an hour straight, he won’t feel like he’s wallowing.

Two minutes later it buzzes again, this time continuously, indicating a phone call. Keith knows that _that_ is probably something he should answer, so he starts to will his body to move just enough to sit him up. Just as he creaks onto his feet, the phone stops vibrating. It’s replaced instead by a sharp knock on his door.

Keith groans, because it’s a little harder to ignore someone knocking on his door. Especially when they wait less than ten seconds to knock again. He picks up his towel woefully as they knock _again_ , and wraps it around his hips.

“I’m coming,” He calls out, stepping over a stack of textbooks as he secures his towel. He’s got a sixth sense for when his parents drop by for a surprise visit, and it’s not tingling at all, so he knows it’s probably some classmate panicking about a grade they got or someone wanting a place to crash because they’ve gotten sexiled. He swings open the door, ready to ask what the hell his visitor wants, when he comes face to face with Shiro.

“Hey,” Shiro says. Keith blinks.

“Uh,” He replies, and Shiro scratches the back of his head. He looks incredibly sheepish, and Keith suddenly wishes he was wearing something more than just a towel. Seeing Shiro in the flesh requires some sort of mental preparation on his part, and Keith has none of it.  At least he’s washed off the stench of general sadness from himself, he thinks faintly. It’s the small victories.

“Lance signed me in,” Shiro says, looking hesitant. “I hope that’s okay. I wanted to talk to you.”

“Lance?” Keith blinks, and Shiro nods. Keith’s first thought is that it explains Lance’s odd behaviour, including the weird grooming before he left. Each subsequent thought is some variation of _Holy shit, he’s here._ “How is he talking to you?”

“He messaged me on one of my social media accounts,” Shiro says, digging his hands in his pockets. “Sent me a picture of himself to prove it was him. It was a really terrifying one. But uh, he said you’d be cool with talking to me. I’m sorry for showing up out of nowhere.”

Keith opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He waits a second, hoping some of the few remaining brain cells he has will start to rub together and fire up one of his neural pathways. Unfortunately, they’re still trying to process the fact that Shiro’s shown up at his front door, dressed in a snug black shirt and faded Wranglers like he’s about to be on the cover of a gritty country album. He looks a little tired too though; Keith can see the faint dark circles under his eyes, and wonders what’s been keeping Shiro up.

“Yeah,” he says, for lack of having anything else to say. “Yeah, uh, come in I guess.”

Shiro looks incredibly awkward as he lumbers into the room. Keith pushes aside the dirty clothes he had dumped on his bed and watches as they pathetically flop to the ground. He’s glad he and Lance at least deigned to wash their sheets, and that the general stench of cheese doritos common throughout their dorm has been effectively nuked by one of Lance’s jasmine candles. He gestures towards the bed, and Shiro takes a seat.

Keith debates whether or not he should tell Shiro to close his eyes so that he can put on some underwear or some pants or something to cover himself up. He doesn’t know if it makes sense, since Shiro’s already seen him naked in a few colourful ways. Keith also registers that he’s been silently standing and staring at Shiro for thirty seconds, so he decides to sit down on the opposite end of the bed.

“So,” Keith starts, not knowing where to look. He takes a side glance at Shiro, and Shiro’s fully turned on his bed, one leg propped up on the mattress so that he can face Keith. It already feels like the conversation is moving fast.

“So,” Shiro echoes. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“I guessed as much,” Keith’s still trying to process that Shiro’s here in his shitty little dorm room, in person instead of in a small screen on Keith’s phone. It sends a familiar fluttering sensation through him and he’s got an itch to touch Shiro, even though he’s not sure that he’s allowed to.  “About what?”

“Your text,” Shiro replies, like it should be a little obvious but he isn’t judging Keith for it.

“What?” Keith frowns, and then is hit with a mildly horrifying realization of a _oh right, that text that made him blow up your phone. That you ignored_.  His stomach drops, and he swallows back a gulp. “Oh. Right.”

“Yeah,” Shiro looks slightly bemused, but Keith’s not sure how he can unpinch his own eyebrows. “The one you sent me on Monday.”

“Uh,” Keith trails off. He’s not quite sure how to tell Shiro that he didn’t actually see the text. Ever. That he didn’t send it to begin with. He thinks that Shiro might telepathically pick up on this,because in an act of mercy, he digs out his phone and unlocks it. He turns the screen towards Keith, and Keith scoots closer so that he can lean in and look.

 _I’m sorry I called you just a friend you mean more to me but it’s ok if you don’t want to do this anymore,_ it reads, and Keith’s eyes widen. Instantly, he feels his cheeks start to burn.   _But if you think it’s worth a shot I think it’s worth a shot._

“Oh,” Keith says. “That text.”

A pin-drop silence falls over the two of them. Keith keeps his eyes glued to Shiro’s phone screen, even after it automatically goes to sleep. Shiro clears his throat, but Keith’s still not ready to make eye contact with him.

“If—“ Shiro starts, then stops. He coughs, and tucks his phone back into his pocket. “Is it true? Do you mean it?”

“Um…” Keith continues to stare at the empty space where Shiro’s phone had been. His brain has come to a grinding halt, and he’s not quite sure if he can speak again.

“If you didn’t, it’s okay,” Shiro says hastily, and Keith _finally_ looks up at him. Shiro looks part embarrassed, part concerned, and Keith’s pretty sure he’s imagining this part but Shiro almost looks a little _hopeful_. “If you don’t anymore it’s okay too.”

Keith knows this is his moment. Knows he should come clean and tell Shiro that yeah, even though he wasn't the one he texted him, he still means everything. But his heart seems to be caught in his throat, and he still feels tongue tied.

Shiro’s face falls when Keith gives his non response. He looks down on his lap, twists his hands. _That_ crestfallen expression finally kicks Keith into gear.

“No” Keith rushes out as sincerely as possible. “I meant it. I still mean it.”

“Oh,” Shiro blinks. “Okay. Just wanted to make sure.”

“Yeah,” Keith closes his eyes and sighs. He knows it’s his turn to be a little forthright. “I didn’t mean it when I called us nothing. I was just trying to get them off our backs and I didn’t think, especially since we’ve never talked about it before.”

“Yeah?” Shiro gives a short laugh, and scratches the back of his head— something Keith's recognizing it as his nervous tic. “I was kind of crushed when I heard that, not gonna lie. I didn’t really know what to do with myself.”

“What?” Keith internally cringes, because it’s a concrete confirmation of what he feared and what his friends had said.  “God, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Shiro assures, raising his hands. “It’s my fault too. I should have asked you on a proper date or something. Probably should have had this conversation earlier too.”

“You wanted to take me out on a date?” Keith blurts out, and Shiro nods.

“Of course,” He says, leveling Keith with a serious look. “But you were always busy or something. And after your friends walked in on us, I thought you only saw us as one thing. Or only wanted one thing.”

Keith finds himself automatically edging closer to Shiro, feeling inexplicably drawn to him. He’s trying not to look too eager, but he’s also desperately hoping this isn’t some sort of fever dream.

“What do _you_ want from me, Shiro?” Keith asks, trying to swallow down the butterflies in his stomach.

“I like you,” Shiro shifts too, slowly shrinking the gap between them. “A lot, as a person. Outside of uh, what we occasionally do.”

“What?” Keith raises an eyebrow. They're sitting almost thigh to thigh now; Keith’s growing acutely aware that the only thing he’s wearing right now is a damp towel. “Snail racing?”

“You know what I mean,” Shiro nudges Keith gently, before shifting his arm back. He leans in slightly, and Keith feels himself drawing in too.  “I like you and I want to be together. Properly.”

Shiro tilts his head and smiles at Keith and the sight of it is so overwhelming that Keith doesn't wait for Shiro to meet him halfway. Keith surges up for a kiss; maybe too enthusiastically by the way that Shiro plants a hand on his arm to steady him. He doesn't hesitate to move his lips against Keith's though, and his fingers curl against Keith's bicep. Keithangles his head, and feels cool metal cup his cheek. It’s unbelievably saccharine, but he doesn’t think he’ll be able to get enough.

“Won’t this ruin your rep?” Keith asks when they break apart, trying to remember how to breathe. “You said you were trying to be more professional.”

“It’s snail racing,” Shiro says in an amused voice, the corner of his lips quirking. He leans down to peck Keith on the lips again. “I only only agreed with you then because I was nervous as hell. I think I’ll be okay. ”

“You’re the one that’s made a career out of being a dick,” Keith points out, and Shiro has the decency to look a little sheepish. “I’m not the one with a Calvin Klein ad on the line.”

“It’ll be fine,” Shiro replies, and  “I’ll make sure of it.”

“I don’t know if I’m convinced,” Keith teases lightly, but Shiro’s face goes completely serious. He looks like he’s on the verge of trying to make another case, but Keith cuts him off before it can go anywhere.

“I like you too,” Keith replies, and the rest comes to him without even thinking. He kisses Shiro again, looping an arm around his waist so that they can get pulled together even closer. Shiro starts to tug, and Keith finds himself slowly getting edged onto Shiro’s lap. His towel shifts, and Keith prays that it stays on. Maybe.

“Good,” Shiro says, moving to kiss Keith’s chin.  “I’m actually in town for a bit so I can take you out properly. If you’re free.”

“A bit?” Keith tips his head, and Shiro presses another one to his jaw.  “Checking out apartments again?”

Shiro freezes against Keith for a moment, long enough that Keith pulls back to give him a questioning look.

“That would be smart,” Shiro says, and Keith squints at him. “I uh, should get on that.”

Something dawns on Keith as Shiro tries to lean in for another kiss. He leans back, and gives Shiro an incredulous look. He doesn’t want to sound too full of himself but—

“Did you come here only for me?” Keith asks point blank, and Shiro presses his lips together. The longer he goes without answering, the brighter his ears get.

“That’s why I didn’t reply yesterday,” Shiro says, embarrassed. “We were going to go sightseeing but I got your message and I couldn’t see myself talking about this over the phone. So yesterday I spent the day driving down from Spokane and kind of just hoped for the best.”

Keith can’t help it. He launches forward again, catching Shiro by surprise as he kisses him with a sloppy intensity. Shiro makes a sound, but wraps his arms around Keith, and Keith decides to clamber fully onto Shiro’s lap, enthusiastically moving their lips together.

“The point of this was for me to let you know that I want you for more than just this,” Shiro murmurs against his mouth, but Keith makes a sound and presses forward to shut him up.

“It’s okay,” Keith says in between the kisses, and he’s pushing Shiro down onto the bed with a wide smile. “I believe you.”

Shiro makes an amused sound, and Keith feels the cold metal of his hand start to slide up his thigh. It’s addictive in a familiar way, but it’s louder this time.

Keith’s heart thuds against his ribcage as Shiro squeezes his thigh. He runs a hand through Shiro’s hair, pushing his bangs off his face as he pulls off. Shiro gives him a small smile and Keith can’t help but return it before diving in for another kiss. He feels his towel shift over Shiro’s hand, and knows it’s on the verge of dropping off. And he’s completely fine with letting it.

 

* * *

 

 

 

There is very little that the public at large knows about Keith, last name unregistered.

They know that he’s a university student that’s never specified what major he studies. They know he’s a prodigy, and they’ve voted his team uniform as ugliest in show at almost every tournament he’s been to. They know that he favours placing his snail in the outermost lane.

They also know that this tournament was his first tournament where he went toe to toe with his greatest enemy, Takashi Shirogane, who openly laughed in the face of a reporter who asked if he was worried about his competition. He’s not insulted Keith, not yet, but enthusiasts of the sport are closely watching for whatever needle he decides to publicly stick into Keith’s ego.

Keith’s completely fine with the public only knowing that. The air of mystery that surrounds him is maybe fractionally due to privacy or Lance’s efforts to build a silent bad boy persona for him; it’s mostly because he’s too lazy to be forthcoming with any information. He’s also got some sense of propriety, which means when a reporter catches him and asks him if he’s got anything to say to Shiro, his reply is not a “Yeah, the shirt you left at my place shrunk in the wash so it’s mine now”.

They’ve talked about whether or not they want people to know about their relationship. Keith’s fine with whatever, because he knows that Shiro’s built his public persona on being extremely dramatic. He’s not needy enough to demand that Shiro publicly tell the whole world that he’s never meant what he’s said about Keith. Shiro’s recently landed a fashion advertisement that’s paying quite an understandable amount, and Keith’s not going to get in the way of that. Though, Keith’s pretty sure that after his initial underwear ad, Shiro’s landing jobs more because he looks like he’s been genetically engineered to be perfect and less because he picks on a physics major.

“Even if he didn’t today, Shirogane’s spent so much time insulting you,” the reporter in front of Keith asks, jabbing a giant spongy microphone in front of him. The race is over, and they’re about to announce the winners, and Keith’s had reporter after reporter come after him. He’s not quite sure why snail racing has this much coverage, and wonders how he can leverage this into tuition money. “How do you maintain your composure?”

The answer to that is simple. Keith takes this sport only semi-seriously, and is riding it out for as long as it’ll give him money. He also has grown to love his snail, which he will admit to no one but her. Keith also thinks that any insult Shiro’s ever thrown at him publicly is dulled by the fact that he knows how Shiro looks when he’s flushed and exhausted and sated.

“Too much salt can kill a snail,” Keith says sagely instead, and the reporter nods along with wide eyes. This is the longest sound byte anyone’s ever gotten out of Keith, and Keith knows they’re going to run with it as far as they can.

There’s a three step podium where each of the winners have to stand, mini terrariums in hand as a pretty girl in a sparkling dress drapes a medal around them. In third place is a man who Keith saw dumping the complimentary jam packets into his pocket at the hotel breakfast bar; in second place is Pidge, who’s got an ever-smug expression on her face; and in first place is Keith, trying to squeeze onto the podium beside Shiro.

Keith’s still not quite sure how two snails can travel across the track at the exact same speed. In the photo finish, the tip of Shiro’s snail had crossed the line at the same time one of eyestalks of Red. The crowd had roared when the judges had thrown the photo up on the screen hanging in the centre of the basketball court the association has rented out for this race. Keith had put his hand on his hips, squinted at the screen, and had exchanged a “ _huh_ ” with Hunk and Lance before one of the race volunteers had ushered him onto the podium.

It’s unprecedented, the announcer bleats over the microphone, and hasn’t happened in the past thirty years of the sport. The last time it did, the two winners had gotten into a fistfight at a bar afterwards and had both spent three nights in the local jail.

Keith looks up at Shiro as the announcer speaks and gives him half a grin. The cameras are on the emcee of the event, listing off all the sponsors, so Keith tries to sneak in a line with Shiro.

“What are you going to say?” He asks, and Shiro raises his eyebrows.

“When?” He asks, and Keith tips his head towards the press pit just ten feet away.

“When they ask you how it feels to share the podium with your arch nemesis,” Keith says gravely, and he can see the laugh that Shiro visibly chokes back.

“You want me to say something?” Shiro says, just as the screen switches back to the winners, and Keith bites back the urge to wink at Shiro.

“Now or never, old man,” Keith teases lightly and he can see Shiro’s mind clicking and whirring visibly. Keith’s sure that he’s very soon going to finally be on the receiving end on an incredibly stupid insult carefully handcrafted by Matt and Coran.

“Well,” Shiro says, and Keith braces himself. He’s already got three different retorts ready, and hopes no one realizes that he’s stolen them from popular social media posts. Shiro slings an arm around Keith and draws him close, and Keith blinks in surprise.

“What-” Keith starts, but can’t finish because suddenly, his mouth’s occupied by Shiro’s. On live television.

In front of a crowd that goes absolutely _bonkers_.

Keith stands frozen on the spot for a hot second, trying to process the fact that Shiro is _kissing_ him on live television.  He manages to catch his brain right before it shuts down, and snakes his arms around Shiro’s waist so that he can turn Shiro and kiss him properly. The announcer is yelling something over the PA, and Keith can feel the heat of a million camera flashes, as well as the palpable surprise of the entire room.

“I’m not going to insult you again,” Shiro murmurs when they break apart, cupping Keith’s face. “I really like you.”

“Yeah?” Keith goes a little cross-eyed as Shiro draws close. “Good for you.”

Shiro barks out a laugh and ducks his head, but Keith places a finger under Shiro’s jaw and tips him forward so he can peck his mouth again. It turns into another kiss, and if the painted apple box hadn’t rattled ominously when they both stepped on it, Keith would dip Shiro back like they were on the cover of the world’s corniest romance novel. Keith knows he’s going to get clowned _hard_ by all his friends, and he knows that Lance isn’t running towards the podium with the gatorade bottle to give Keith something to drink.

So the public ends up learning a new thing about both Takashi Shirogane and Keith, last name not applicable: they’re no longer sworn enemies on the field. They have, in fact, surmounted all their differences in favour of kindling a romance that has many of the sport’s lovers speculating when exactly the animosity stopped.

No one can pin point it because it had never truly begun, but Keith’s fine with the public not knowing that.

  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I FEEL LIKE I WROTE THIS FIC IN A FEVER DREAM MOSTLY BECAUSE I'M POSTING THIS AT 3AM NOW I'M READY TO HAVE S7 BLOW ME AWAY...
> 
> thanks to [spifty](spiftynifty.tumblr.com) for the "salt kills snails" line and also for [ this hilariously NSFW image](http://spiftynifty.tumblr.com/post/176175008198/im-sorry-im-so-late-on-this-i-guess-i-just). thank you to [Shiverslightly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiverslightly/pseuds/Shiverslightly) for that excellent pun I used at the beginning. thank YOU for reading a story with a niche sport and a 2008 ffdotnet premise. one day i will be a serious auteur; that day may be never.

**Author's Note:**

> Come throw rocks at me on [tumblr](http://phaltu.tumblr.com) or [twitter](http://twitter.com/tagteamme)!!
> 
> [ also please check out this AMAZING art by ludo for this au!!! ](http://ludo-art.tumblr.com/post/177428164928/snail-racing-au)


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